Mother tells of terrifying moment stranger tried to walk off with her toddler at supermarket

A mother has described the terrifying moment a stranger attempted to walk off with her three-year-old son during a shopping trip.

Lucy Wooldridge, 30, was momentarily distracted while buying sweets for her two children at a Co-operative store in Westcliff-on-Sea, Essex, when the incident occurred.

An unknown man took her son, Kristian, by the hand and attempted to lead him away, saying “come here”.

Luckily, the young boy immediately screamed: “Mummy.” Ms Wooldridge said: “It was horrible — I could hear the panic in Kristian’s voice when he shouted to me. I knew something was wrong so I ran around and saw this man. I called at Kristian to come to me and the man let go and walked away.

“At first I thought maybe the man was trying to find me, but then staff in the shop said the man hadn’t been in the shop and he had seen Kristian, walked in and grabbed his hand.

“If I was two seconds later getting to him, he would have gone.”

The terrifying experience has left Ms Wooldridge, from Basildon, scared to let Kristian out of the house.

She added: “I am still a nervous wreck about what happened. I will never forget it — it will stay with me forever.”

Police are now reviewing CCTV footage of the incident, which happened shortly before 5pm on June 26.

The case echoes the abduction of James Bulger from a shopping centre in Merseyside in 1993.

His killers, Robert Thompson and Jon Venables, approached their two-year-old victim the in the A.R. Tym's butcher's shop in Bootle while his mother Denise was momentarily distracted.

CCTV images showed the pair leading Bulger out of the shop and walking away with him along the precinct. They later tortured and murdered him, dumping his body on a railway track.